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We sat down with Ubisoft Senior Producer on Ruse, Mathieu Girard, and Project Co-ordinator Thomas Leroux-Hugon to discuss Ruse, the upcoming World War II RTS from Eugen Systems. Technophobes should probably skip through question three, or check out our preview for a gentler description.
TVG: Ruse's vast, open battlefields are similar in style to a Total War game, while the camera can zoom stratospherically above the action seamlessly until the battlefield appears almost like a board game, which reminded me a lot of Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation. Has the development team been influenced by games like that at all?
Mathieu Girard: I guess every strategy game was somehow a small inspiration, but not one in particular. Lots of board games and movies about espionage and that sort of thing were an influence, but there's not one single inspiration.
That's really what was difficult in making this game, which was that we had to invent stuff and there were no clear examples of what we needed to do, so we had to pick parts from poker, parts from board games, and parts from videogames. Sometimes it was more like trial and error when we were testing stuff to make sure that it's fun and it works, and to get the final results.
Thomas Leroux-Hugon: Another consequence of that is that we have a lot of competitors in terms of real-time strategy games, and the angle we wanted to take with it was using Ruses as an element of strategy.
TVG: You mentioned that Ruse is leading on the PC, but I noticed you were using the Xbox 360 pad on a PC rig during our demonstration. Does this mean we can expect a particularly console friendly interface and control layout?
MG: It's part of the key features of the game, which is that it's very simple to use the program but it's still very deep in terms of the possibilities you have. It's not about the complexity of the control and how many clicks you have to do; it's really about the decisions you want to make and what the game is going to give you in terms of information.
The creative vision from the beginning was the perception of deceiving the enemy - what you want them to believe and what you want them to see in terms of false information - and we focused less on the interface. I guess the interface was something that emerged naturally. We wanted an immersive game; we wanted a natural game, and we wanted to show strategy decisions. For example, we have these big arrows that show where armies are attacking, so it emerged quite naturally actually.
TL: Another point is that with the Iris engine you can zoom in and out. The zoom itself gives a real interface that at one time gives you a high scale balance of power and then you can zoom-in to see the precise situation of one infantry unit and target him. That's why the zoom is so important apart from being good looking, because every level makes sense in terms of gameplay.
TVG: Speaking of the kind of zoom Ruse employs over such large scales, what sort of technological breakthroughs have Eugen Systems (Ruse's developer) made that enable them to depict these sorts of vast, streaming environments, because we've never seen anything quite like it?
MG: It's a breakthrough around streaming data that's reconstructed dynamically across the geometry on-screen, so what you see in an image is actually the construction of something virtual - a huge database of assets, of textures, and of 3D modelling. It's very complex because you have to reveal everything for every frame because it's not possible to fit one billion polygons inside the memory, so it's streaming and re-using stuff. And also the way it performs with computation is that every graphical display, the AI, the composition and visual effects display are broken down into micro tasks that are cosmetically spread on all of the cores in a PC.
On the Xbox 360 it's going to spread among the three cores, on the PC it's however many cores you have, and on PS3 we're going to use three SPUs for that. It's brand new because some games use multi-threading in terms of, 'Okay, I'm going to group gameplay here; I'm going to group physics here, and I'm going to group this play here,' and somehow the balance may leave the game. In our case it's just that there are lots of small tasks and then they disseminate in the cores. Intel guys like this kind of game because it really takes advantage of multi-core technology naturally.
TVG: It almost reminds me of what Ubisoft Montreal did with Far Cry 2, in the sense that the developers managed to make such a vast game world stable by streaming lots of small textures rather than a few large ones...
MG: Actually, it's not only streaming data from the disk but streaming it from one universe through to another one. To store this amazing world we had to store this data structure and then we had to transform it into something that can actually represent a 3D world. It's complex to explain.
TVG: As far as the main campaign is concerned, are you going for historically accurate renditions of World War II battles, or is it just more generally set around WWII?
MG: It's accurate battles, but that's very accurate about what went on; which commanders did precise moves. You have some freedom to play the mission the way you want to play it, but the main objectives you'll have to follow are historically correct. So, again, the units are historically correct; there's no science-fiction or space ships but it's more about using the most exciting units at that time - using them together to have a good gameplay experience.
TVG: Will there be much urban warfare in the campaign, or will it mostly be played out through battlefields?
MG: It depends, actually, on the conditions.
TL: Apart from the terrain itself, the way the towns are built (e.g. how large they are) makes a real difference, so it depends upon a map and the environment.
MG: Tunisia, for instance, is a map with fewer villages. There are fewer urban zones and much more open distances, which is good for the beginning of the game. And then, in the end, when you go into central Europe there will be much more cities and we'll have some interesting stuff in multiplayer as well.
TVG: Can you speak about the multiplayer at all?
MG: We can speak about skirmish. You will have one vs. one up to four vs. four battles, either against the AI or other players. You can choose any faction you want to play as, whether it's the Russians vs. the Italians - whatever you want to do is possible, and the Italians are going to win! [Mathieu says to Ubisoft's UK PR Manager, and Italian descendant, Stefano Petrullo].
Stefano Petrullo: All of the other factions have a speciality, such as the Russians and Americans, but I'm curious: what was the Italians' speciality?
TL: Pizzas.
SP: Pizza?!
MG: No, the numbers - lots of ship units that you can churn out.
SP: Ship units. That makes lots of sense for Italians [said sarcastically].
MG: No, it means more like a Zerg approach - like in Starcraft.
SP: I was very curious, because I know the Italian army was not famous for its strengths.
MG: And about the other modes, we have some other stuff but we're not going to talk about it right now.
TVG: But there will be different balancing of strengths for the various factions?
TL: Yes.
TVG: And you're not saying anything more about a release window than just "2009" at this point?
SP: It's just 2009. It's coming out, whether it's Q2, Q3, or Q4.
TVG: Other games of Ruse's type, such as Creative Assembly's Total War games, are well known for having the best examples of AI in the RTS genre. Obviously it's going to be a big challenge, but do you feel Ruse's AI will be up to Total War standards, when there are times that you feel like you're battling against a human opponent?
MG: It's funny that you say that because I was not so convinced by Medieval: Total War II, but I think the last one is better. Anyway, we have a good AI developer. He's a Doctor in cognitive sciences, so...
TVG: That helps...
MG: Yeah, it helps. Actually, the guys in the development team have difficulty to beat the AI when it's in the hard mode and they cannot afford to make mistakes when they play, so right now I would say we have AI that's maybe a bit too strong for the average player. It's an AI that's divided into the small tactical AIs and then there's a high level general that's using an economy general, a supremacy general that works out the terrain, and then a fighting general that decides where to send all the groups. I would say it's pretty smart and I have difficulty to beat the Major AI, so I think it will be good - I have no worry about that.
The big thing was about making AI that actually tries to fool you and guess what you're doing because the AI has access to the memory of the computer, so it can cheat and know what you're doing, so it was difficult to have something that knows what you're doing without knowing from the computer.
TL: The good thing - and you can see it from that very early version - is that the AI is already using a lot of deception skills, combining them, and changing sectors etc. This makes it really different and much more exciting because at some point the computer tells you, "You've been Rused!" or "The enemy has used a power," and 10 seconds later you've got an enemy tank inside your base, so that makes you feel like you're fighting someone smart. And that's actually what we see as the golden path to fooling people in multiplayer, so playing the single-player and then playing skirmish to train and get used to everything, and then playing real people who try to fool you and fooling them.
TVG: You mentioned three types of Ruses...
MG: Fake info, hide info, and steal info. That's all so far. There are other Ruses coming but we're not detailing that right now.
TVG: And you said there were 10 different Ruses altogether of those three types. Are there different sub-categories of each Ruse type and can you give some examples?
TL: For the fake info, you have got fake buildings (something very solid) and then the fake units are going to be moving so that's quite different. All of the info layer in the game will then look different depending on how you use them, and then you have numerous prototypes and concepts that we are testing right now.
MG: What you saw in the demonstration was really an example of the seven different Ruses available and we have more, but we made these seven for the play-test just to test them. Perhaps in the final game there will be more than three types of Ruse.
TVG: The demo also showed generals giving you orders as main objectives, which suggested an element of scripting to each level. Will that be the case, where the level structure makes you take down one objective after another, or will it be more open-ended?
MG: Actually, you will have both. There are some points where you will need to learn some stuff, so obviously you will need a precise objective to do that, but we still try to give you a few options to choose from. When you get to open objectives, you'll have to do things like defend an area from troops coming in all sorts of directions, so you'll have a lot of choice in how you do that. It's a mix of more guided objectives as you learn how to play the game and then you put this into practice in a new situation, and then you go back to learning stuff.
The beginning of the game is very simple. You have to learn basic stuff and then as the game goes on it becomes more and more open. If you want to open up all the options at once, then you can go to the multiplayer where you can access any type of building from the start because we want to give players all the possible strategies to choose from. If you want to start with air domination from the start, for example, then you can do that.
http://www.totalvideogames.com/RUSE/feature-13885.html
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